


Harbinger

by pinkwithoutplot



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean/Male Character, Kinks, M/M, Rape/Non-con - Freeform, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-21 18:45:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8256422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkwithoutplot/pseuds/pinkwithoutplot
Summary: Gadreel didn't lead Eve to any tree. He was merely a herald for something much bigger. Something which has been stalking Dean's brother for a long, long time...





	

 

 

Dean searched everywhere for Sam in the aftermath of the prophet’s death. Kevin’s funeral pyre was still smouldering when he locked up the bunker and hit the road. He looked in all their old haunts and foxholes, every safe house and secret meeting place he could recall. He tried tracking him, used every trick in the book, but Gadreel knew everything that Sam knew, and Sam knew Dean better than anything else, so it was a rigged game from the outset.  
Stalemate.

For the first few weeks, he’d called around everyone still alive, human or otherwise, pumping them for intel. He tried bargaining with angels and demons alike. No one was playing ball. Crowley, a drivelling shadow of himself, knew nothing either. Dean blunted three good knives making sure of that.  
In the shallow hours before dawn, alone in dark, anonymous rooms, Dean bloodied his knuckles punching the floor and let himself cry. What the fuck was wrong with him anyway? Why was he hardwired like this? Sam may have been the one with a rogue angel squatting inside of him, but Dean was possessed too. Nothing supernatural sidewinding through his blood, yet he had no more control over himself than Sam did right now. Not really. Never had. At least that’s what he kept telling himself.  
Every choice he would ever face had been made the night Mary Winchester burned screaming, and their father thrust Sam, tiny and mewling, into his arms. He’d set off running down a path that night, straight and true, and even now that it was murky and meandering and probably leading nowhere good, he couldn’t deviate. He mustn’t stray. Keep Sam safe.  
It was the reason he’d refused to salt and burn his brother’s body when Jake’s knife severed his spine, clutching his cooling hand instead and mentally checking off the list of things he’d need for the crossroads. It was the reason he’d broken his promise and kept on poring over countless books, looking for a way to lead a harrowing of Hell when he should have been learning to let go, to grieve, and the reason he’d crammed the sharp fragments of Sam’s shattered soul back inside his hollow meat.  
It was the reason he’d let a serpent drip-feed him honeyed lies from a forked tongue, and worm his way inside Sam’s dying body.

Castiel tried his best, but his presence in the passenger seat served as a constant reminder of Sam’s absence. Cas had taken to reading for hours at a time, engrossed in dense novels and volumes of poetry, while Dean watched mile after mile of highway disappear beneath the Impala’s wheels. Cas had started drinking too, taking long swallows of Dean’s Jim Beam any time it was proffered, and probably when Dean’s back was turned as well.

“Hey, Dean?”  
“Yeah?”  
“You ever read Swinburne?”  
Cas tapped the hardcover book in his lap. The hint of a slur softened the edges of his voice.  
Dean frowned.  
“What burn?”  
Cas rolled his eyes and cleared his throat.  
“Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour,  
To think of things that are well outworn?  
Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower,  
The dream foregone and the deed forborne?”  
Dean’s jaw tensed. He swung the car into the motel parking lot.  
“I think I preferred you before you got empathy.”  
Cas gave a small shrug.  
“I think I did too.”

They didn’t share rooms, not even to save money. To Castiel’s credit, he never asked why not. While he seemed a little hurt at first, as the weeks trundled by he spent more and more time alone, at least so Dean thought until one morning he saw a woman leaving Cas’s room shortly after sun up.  
“You sly dog, Cas,” Dean said under his breath, feeling a smile tug at the corners of his mouth for the first time since he couldn’t remember when.

They both stopped shaving. They ate bad food. They hit up bars in the evening. More often than not, Cas would end up excusing himself to talk to some girl. He’d wobble off on unsteady legs with a stupid grin plastered to his face, and that would be the last Dean saw of him until they hit the road the next day. But while Cas embraced his newfound humanity in all its squalid splendour, Dean no longer found comfort in the arms of strangers. The first touch of unexplored flesh held no magic these days.  
He developed a force-field around him, the unkempt scruff on his face hiding the plush curves of his mouth, a cap pulled down to dull the olivine beauty of his eyes with shadow. The extra weight around his middle. The sour smell of stale bourbon seeping out of his skin. And if these things weren’t enough of a deterrent, he sat in dark corners, endless refills fuelling his maudlin sessions, and replayed old conversations with his brother, muttering to himself and laughing bitterly at half-remembered jibes.

On one particularly dark night, Dean sat slouched in the corner booth of some dive in Monroeville, PA, down to the dregs of his liquor bottle.  
“Nearly a fifth down, Sammy. Remember how Dad would call these fifths even though we changed to metric in, like, 1980? That man could hold his drink. Must be in the genes, huh bro? Although you’re out of practice. All that clean living made you a lightweight. You know, there’s a measure called a Winchester quart? That’s true, Sammy. I ain’t making it up. Google it if you don’t believe me.”  
A tall figure entered the bar, drawing Dean’s attention from his one sided conversation with his absent brother. The guy was tall and well built, a little bulkier than Sam had been of late, but he had shaggy brown hair tamed by a beanie and just for a second, Dean’s heart leapt into his mouth. He pulled his own cap off and raked his fingers through his dirty hair. It needed a trim. Sam used to cut it for him. The guy turned and in profile, if Dean squinted, it could have been his brother. The guy had a similar strong jaw and slightly upturned nose. He even had dimples when he grinned. The guy pumped the hand of his waiting friend firmly and clapped him on the shoulder. Dean ached in the place where Castiel’s brand used to be, the nerve endings there longing for the warm, broad span of his brother’s hand.  
Dean went to the bathroom, stuffed his cap into his pocket and scrubbed his face and hair with hand wash and hot water. He spent long moments working the crescents of blood and dirt out from under his fingernails. He licked his palm and sniffed it to test his breath. Alcohol. Peanuts. Not too offensive. He tucked in his shirt and checked himself for stains. A few grease patches on his jeans. Nothing suspicious.  
Feeling marginally less skeevy, Dean went back to his table and scribbled a note on the back of a napkin, his heart hammering against his ribs all the while.

He waited for the guy’s friend to visit the john, before approaching. The guy sensed Dean hovering behind him and turned. Dean looked into his eyes. He never thought he’d be doing this again. It had only ever been a few times when things got really desperate, and each time Dean promised himself it would be the last. This was different. This time it was a lot worse because it wasn’t about earning a quick fifty bucks. This time he was asking for himself. After a lifetime of repressed desire and shame, Dean was giving in. Sam was gone and he had nothing left to lose.  
He held the guy’s gaze for a few seconds too long, putting everything into it. At this proximity, there was no mistaking him for Sam. His eyes were brown, his teeth small with spaces between, like he’d never lost his milk set. But there was something about the way he inhabited his shape, the way his grown-out bangs flopped in his eyes, the slope of his nose. It was close enough. The guy held his stare. The barest hint of a smirk. Good then. Dean slid the folded napkin along the bar and didn’t hang about to watch the guy read it.

Dean waited and waited. He was just about to call it a night when the tall figure loped around the corner and towards where he was leaning against cold brickwork.  
“Hey, man,” Dean said. “Thought maybe I’d lost my touch.”  
The guy emerged from the shadows and Dean could see his lips were pursed, his brow furrowed.  
Yeah, just like that, he thought. Just like Sam. Atta boy.  
The guy’s fists were opening and closing by his side, all that power hanging impotently at the end of his long arms.  
“I ain’t no faggot,” he said.  
Dean shrugged. “Me neither. But we’re both adults. Both got needs. Why don’t we help each other out? No one needs to know.”  
The guy’s eyes narrowed.  
Dean swallowed dryly. Maybe he’d misjudged this one, but probably not. Most people would take what was on offer as long as they could convince themselves there wasn’t a catch.  
“You can call me anything you like. Boy’s name. Girl’s name. Close your eyes and pretend. I won’t be offended, sweetheart.”  
The guy loomed over him, crowding him against the wall and grabbed the front of his shirt. He scanned Dean’s face for a while, breathing hard, then spun him around and shoved him hard into the wall, face to rough brick.  
“Shut up.”  
Dean let his eyes slip closed and concentrated on the feel of huge hands on him, gripping him, patting him down, fumbling with his belt buckle. There was an urgency about it, and he could almost believe the guy was checking him over, probing for broken bones and bullet holes.  
“That’s it, Sammy. You gonna take care of me?” He laughed.  
The guy’s hands stilled.  
“What’re you talking about?”  
“Nothing,” Dean sighed. “Nothing. Just don’t stop.”  
The guy pulled Dean’s jeans down under his butt and the cold air made him shiver. The guy panted hot, damp breath against the side of his neck and said,  
“You got anything?”  
“Just spit on it.”  
“I mean a rubber.”  
Dean bumped his forehead lightly against the wall.  
“Shit. No. It doesn’t matter though, I’m clean. Just do it.”  
The guy snorted and jerked Dean around to face him.  
“You crazy? Or that hard up for it?”  
Dean laughed, his eyelids starting to droop as the chill night air exacerbated his drunkenness.  
“Don’t plan on living long enough for it to matter.”  
The guy started to back off, but Dean clasped at his jacket, pulling him back. He groped at his half-hard cock through his pants.  
“Come on, man. Just put your hands on me at least.”  
The guy relented, sliding one hand down the front of Dean’s briefs and squeezing his erection.  
“Just this though.”  
“Yeah, that’s it. Just like that.” Dean licked his lips and let his head fall back. “Harder. C’mon. Make me feel it.”  
Dean lunged for the guy’s mouth, holding him in place with both hands on the back of his head, sucking and biting at his lips.  
“Ouch! Hey! Take it easy!” The guy wrenched his head back. “What the fuck, dude? That hurts.” He wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Is that…am I bleeding?”  
Dean flashed him an insane grin, pink smear of blood on his teeth.  
“Don’t be such a pussy. It’s just a little blood. C’mon. Finish me off.”  
The guy took a step backwards, eyes wide.  
“Look, I…this was a mistake. I’m sorry.”  
He turned to leave and Dean spat after him, a slick globule landing on the back of his jacket with a faint smack.  
“Come back here, you fucking prick-tease!”  
The guy wheeled around.  
“You’re fucking insane, man!”  
“Faggot!”  
Dean braced himself, but the guy’s fist connected with his left ear, harder than he’d imagined. White-hot pain burst in his skull, a tiny supernova, and the world tilted under his feet. Dean blinked, steadied himself, and laughed. This was a language he understood. The guy hit him again, fist glancing off his jaw this time. Dean’s teeth clattered together and the guy’s knuckle tore his bottom lip open as it skidded over his mouth. More blows rained down, and Dean laughed all the while. His left eye began to swell shut, reducing his attacker to a silhouette, making it easy to pretend.  
“That’s it, Sammy,” he slurred. “I deserve it. I’m sick in the head. I know it. Hit me. Oh God, yeah. Harder, brother. I need it to hurt. Make me feel it, Sam. Make me feel it.”  
Dean clung to the guy’s jacket, trying to rut against his thigh while the guy dropped his head to Dean’s shoulder and jabbed at the soft meat of his belly, his ribs, his kidneys.  
Dean came hard, his brother’s name bubbling out through a mouthful of blood. The guy retreated and Dean slumped to the ground.  
“Goddamn freak!”

When he reached the motel, Dean crawled into the shower and let it run as hot as he could bear. The steaming water sluiced the blood, come and spit from his body, but it couldn’t wash the taint from his soul. He’d let this happen. He’d pimped Sam out to the first creature that came knocking because he was twisted and Gadreel had seen right through him.  
He couldn’t let go. Alistair had known it. Gabriel. Henricksen. Zachariah. Lisa. Their own father. Even perfect strangers. Everyone could see it shining out of him. Dean Winchester was one sick puppy. Nausea overwhelmed him and he almost lost his footing scrambling out of the shower and to the toilet to throw up the fifth of gut-rot he’d had instead of dinner.

Castiel gasped when he saw the mess the guy had made of Dean’s face. He tried to dab the mottled bruising with aloe, but Dean pushed him away. He didn’t need kindness. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t want it. He pressed hard on the marks when he was alone, the soreness a reminder of how he’d lost the best part of himself.

They kept driving. Through small towns and vast cities, through farmland, along rivers, around mountains, over state lines, criss-crossing the country, chasing Sam’s ghost. The broke into churches under the cover of darkness to replenish their stocks of holy water, forced priests to bless it by the gallon drum at gunpoint. Dean and Cas burnt up a hundred fallen angels in righteous fire, depleting the jugs of holy oil in the Impala’s trunk, but none of this led them to Gadreel.

News of the pandemic spread fast. Pockets of infection appeared simultaneously on every continent, and as red dots on newsroom maps. The afflicted became increasingly violent and passed on the mutated virus through scratches and bites.  
“Croatoan,” Dean said.  
“The demon virus?”  
“I’m getting deja-vu here, Cas.”  
“The Niveus vaccine program? But we destroyed all the samples.”  
“Apparently not all. Besides, what’s to stop some demon bastard engineering some more?”  
Cas sipped his coffee thoughtfully while Dean scanned the papers.  
“Who do you think’s behind it?”  
Dean took a bite of his pastry and shrugged.  
“Could be anyone,” he said, spraying crumbs onto the Formica. “Abaddon? One of Crowley’s minions?”  
“But to what end?”  
“Since when do those dicks need a reason? Chaos, Cas. Destruction. Bloodlust. We had our chance to shut the gates for good, and I fucked it up. I fucked up, and now people are dying. Again. Third verse, same as the first.”  
Cas set down his coffee cup and signalled to the waitress for a refill.  
“Come life, come death, not a word be said;  
Should I lose you living, and vex you dead?  
I never shall tell you on earth; and in heaven,  
If I cry to you then, will you hear or know?”  
“Heartburn?”  
“Swinburne. The greatest poet of a crumbling age. The ultimate decadent, although many believe he claimed more vices than he actually committed.” He paused. “I get it, Dean. I do. It was Sam.”  
Hot tears needled behind Dean’s eyes, and he stared out of the window to avoid Castiel’s limpid blue stare.

Dean scoured countless texts, searching for even the most fleeting mention of the angel Gadreel. He read The Book of Enoch over and over, although Cas tutted and dismissed the Apocrypha as the ramblings of a madman.  
And the name of the third is Gadreel; this is the one that showed all the deadly blows to the sons of men. And he led astray Eve. And he showed the weapons of death to the children of men, the shield and the breastplate, and the sword for slaughter, and all the weapons of death to the sons of men.  
Was it possible that the creature who taught men to wage war was wearing his brother? The thing which slithered up to the first woman in the garden and planted the seed of rebellion in her breast?

“It wasn’t an apple,” Cas said, swigging from battered hipflask as they drove towards a town in Kansas City, MI where three of the inhabitants lay in hospital beds with burnt out eyes. He’d been silent for so long that Dean had forgotten he was there.  
“What’re you talking about now, Cat Stevens?”  
Castiel ran a hand though his thick, unruly hair and gave a rueful smile.  
“In the garden. It wasn’t an apple. As far as I can tell, the apple is just a symbol. Forbidden fruit. It’s the Latin, you see. Mālum and mălum.”  
Dean rolled his eyes.  
“You know Sammy’s the Latin scholar. Spit it out, Cas.”  
“Spelled one way, it means ‘apple’. Spell it slightly differently and it means ‘evil’. Eve was lead into temptation, sure. But there were no apples involved.”  
“And you’re telling me this because…”  
“There’s something you should know about the angel inhabiting your brother. Something which isn’t in any of the books. Gadreel didn’t lead Eve to any tree, Dean. There was no snake either. They’re just metaphors. He was readying her. Preparing her to be the conduit through which evil could enter. She was a vessel. Maybe the first vessel.”  
Dean was about to ask what this meant for Sam, when a shape at the side of the road drew his eye. A child crouched on the verge, face hidden by a veil of dirty-blond hair, shoulders shaking. Dean pulled the car over and watched the kid in the rear view for a while.  
“We should see if she’s okay,” Cas ventured. “I think it’s a she.”  
Dean shook his head.  
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this, man. Sort of déjà vu.”  
“What do you mean?”  
Dean wiped a film of flop sweat off his brow and nudged open the driver’s door. He got out of the car, crunching the gravel underfoot, but the child didn’t look up. Dean drew his gun and approached the huddled form.  
“Little girl?” His voice came out gruffer than he meant it to. “Hey, kid! You okay?” He stalked closer, the lack of audible sobbing giving him pause. “Kid?”  
He reached out with his free hand, tentative, just as the child wheeled around and sprang at him, all bloodshot eyes and bared teeth and spittle.  
“Dean!”  
The clunk of the Impala’s passenger door slamming drew her attention for long enough for Dean to put some space between them. Castiel’s footfall kicked up stone chips as he ran. Dean backed away from the snarling girl and the surprisingly long reach of her arms, each of her stiff fingers tipped with filthy, pointy little nails, but she just came right after him. Castiel’s hand landed on his shoulder just as the feral kid leapt forward again and Dean lashed out and struck her in the face with the butt of his gun. The wet crunch of splintered bone turned his stomach. Her little body crumpled and she lay in the dirt like a discarded doll.  
“What just happened?” Cas asked.  
“Croatoan,” Dean said. He couldn’t believe it had taken him so long to work it out. “The virus. Kansas. I’ve been here before, Cas. It’s happening again.”  
His knees buckled, and for only the third time in his adult life, Dean Winchester blacked out.  
  
“When was this?” Cas asked taking a pull on his beer.  
“Back before Sam took a dive into the cage. I thought Zachariah was just messing with my head. Trying to dupe me into doing it his way. It wouldn’t have been the first time.”  
“So it was 2014. The virus had wiped out most of the population and we’d set up camp around here?”  
“Right. And you…you were human. Like now. You were drinking and smoking and fucking anything that would stay still for long enough and spouting all this hippy-dippy crap. Like John Lennon minus the talent.”  
“Well, I have to admit, this is a little odd. I mean, Zachariah created the scenario to coerce you into saying ‘yes’ to Michael. It wasn’t a true glimpse into the future.”  
Dean wiped his hand over his mouth and pinched the bridge of his nose. A dull ache was forming behind his eyes.  
“Maybe not. But you said yourself, Gadreel was just grooming Eve to let Lucifer in. What if he’s done it again? I saw Lucifer in that garden. He told me whatever I did, whatever my intentions, Sam would always say yes in Detroit. One way or another, he would end up inside my brother, Cas.”  
Dean’s voice cracked and he downed the dregs of his whiskey.  
Cas’s brow furrowed and he watched Dean swallow before saying,  
“Well, that sounded kind of dirty.”  
Cas chuckled. Dean was so surprised he nearly choked on the liquor blazing its way down his throat. Cas grinned and Dean found himself laughing in spite of the yawning ache in his chest. He laughed to stop himself from screaming.

Once the wheels were in motion, it didn’t take long for things to descend into chaos. Bars and restaurants were the first places to shut down. Curfews were introduced. No one went to the movies or bowling or for long, moonlit walks anymore. They remained barricaded in their homes. TV became an endless stream of rolling news and re-runs of old sitcoms, as if the networks could anesthetise people to the horror outside their front doors with canned laughter and nostalgia.  
The general sense of unease became panic. Gas stations rationed fuel so people took to syphoning from their neighbors’ tanks. Supermarkets and grocery stores couldn’t replenish their dwindling supplies. Rioting became de facto. Abandoned homes and shops were looted. Marshall Law was introduced but even Uncle Sam’s finest were impotent in the face of such savage and motiveless rage. Best friends knifed each other in the guts for the last family-sized tin of franks. Sales of firearms rocketed until everyone was armed to the teeth and traditional currency lost its sway.  
Running didn’t help, but people left the cities in droves anyway. They settled in the mountains, in the deserts, on windswept grassy plateaus. They formed small, gated communities in the suburbs which soon became over-crowded and over-run. What started as the establishment of coalitions and communes gradually morphed into tribal warfare as food and utilities became increasingly scarce.  
Horses and zoo animals were sacrificed first. Whilst people were happy to do unspeakable things to former friends and distant relatives, they were surprisingly squeamish about butchering their beloved pet pooches and cats. Until they weren’t.  
  
Dean didn’t call their refuge Camp Chitaqua. Just because Fate was dogging his every move didn’t mean he had to turn around and welcome her with open arms. He tried not to get too involved with the others. He heard stories though. Most people had lost someone. One of the women suffered night terrors. She screamed a boy’s name over and over in her sleep. Scared the shit out of the others almost every night. When Dean pulled her up on it, she confessed that he had been her son, four years old, snatched from her arms by a group of masked men. They weren’t even infected. Just hungry. This was the world they lived in now.  
  
The uncanny sense of déjà vu which stalked him always, dragged the losses of the dim and distant past out into the light. It picked the scabs off old wounds, the pain dulled by the passage of time, so that they stung afresh. Dean missed his loved ones something fierce. Bobby, his father, Kevin, Ellen, Jo, Ash. Hell, he even missed Garth and Chuck. He missed Cas too, in a way, the Castiel he’d lost when the angel had his grace ripped from him. This broken, distorted version was too much a mirror for Dean’s liking. With his flask and his bong and his long-dead poets. The way he slept, fucked and read his way through the dark days so he wouldn’t have to face the reality of what was happening. Wouldn’t have to feel.  
Hell was coming again. Death and all his angels walked the earth, and so did demons, and so did the same monsters Dean had fought his whole life, only now people were monsters too. Perhaps the very worst kind.  
If Heaven hadn’t shut up shop, Dean might have been inclined to let Death reap the whole stinking planet. There wasn’t much left for humanity here as far as he could see. But part of him couldn’t make peace with leaving people, good people, to die while the promise of eternal rest was just a pipe dream.  
And as much as he’d welcome an end to it all, Dean couldn’t let go of life, such as it was, while Sam was still out there somewhere.

Every day he didn’t catch up with his brother, a glowing ember of hope remained, buried way down in the core of him. Each night he sat in his shack and told Sam everything he’d done that day. He whispered into his pillow or muttered aloud as he set about cleaning his guns and sharpening his blades. He recounted his kills, losses and blessings (few and far between though they were), confessed his fears, his desires. Most of them anyway. He spoke of Castiel and the fallen angel’s escapades, of any new survivors arriving at the camp.  
  
Now and then a woman would arrive at the gate, alone and grateful, and Dean would see that look flare in her eyes. The one that said you could be my saviour. My lover. My mate. We could start a brave new world. And now and then Dean was tempted. He really was. One of them would flick her hair or give him a wry smile. She’d say something and the tone of her voice would remind him of Lisa, and he’d think what if? But any time he imagined the feel of her beneath him, her pliant curves under his hands, his thoughts inevitably drifted to the sense memory of that guy pulverising him outside that sleazy bar in Monroeville all those long months ago. And the meaty thwack of a fist pounding into him reminded him of Sam, his Sammy, beating the devil in Stull Cemetery. His little brother, consumed by an unholy fire, fighting, driving his knuckles into the pulpy mess of Dean’s face. Sam battling Lucifer with all his might, breaking Dean’s heart and filling it with pride all at once. Dean unsure whether he wanted Sam to gain the upper hand at all, because Sam winning meant Dean losing the one thing he knew he’d never learn to let go of.  
  
Cas started a distillery in one of the out buildings they used to store food and weapons, a fair way off from the main cluster of huts and dorms. He made moonshine out of vegetable peelings and grain. Dean hit the liquor hard one night, so hard he worried he’d done permanent damage to his eyesight. So much so that he almost agreed to attend one of Cas’s private ‘meditation sessions’. He’d bottled it at the last minute, the thought of Castiel’s gaze on him in the throes of whatever passed for passion these days just too weird to go through with. Dean knew the angel had had a certain fondness for him. He’d spent years carefully sidestepping that particular elephant in the room. He had no reason to think human Cas would be any less fervent in his drunken affections than the angel had been. And while part of him thought fuck it, why not throw the poor guy a bone, here at the end of the world, the overruling part wasn’t willing to risk crossing a line they couldn’t come back from. Then there was the fact he’d have to look the women in the eye afterwards. Lead them. Protect them. He severely doubted his ability to even rise to the occasion anyway. At least not without his wayward brother’s names spilling shamefully from his lips.  
Cas took this rebuff with good grace.  
“O all fair lovers about the world,  
There is none of you, none, that shall comfort me.  
My thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirled  
Round and round in a gulf of the sea;”  
“Swinburne, I suppose?” Dean said.  
Cas winked, another thing he’d never have done as a celestial being.  
“See. You’re learning.”

On the day he received word that Sam Winchester had been seen in Detroit, great forks of lightning split the grey sky. Dean drove with the pedal to the floor, wipers smearing a mixture of ash and rain back and forth across the windshield. The Chevrolet had seen better days. It was impossible to keep her paintwork clean with all the dirt and corrosive shit poisoning their atmosphere. It was as if the weather knew the world was on its last legs and had decided to hurry things along. He’d given everyone at the camp orders not to follow him. Cas tried to anyway. Of course he did. Dean felt bad about knocking the poor guy out, but it was a case of needs must. He didn’t want any witnesses. He didn’t want goodbyes.  
The city lay in ruins. The acrid stench of burning rubber and rotting flesh stung Dean’s eyes as he got out of the car and shunted the door shut with his hip. He took one last look at the toy soldier in his palm, then pushed it deep into his jeans pocket. He ran his hand over the warm, sleek hood and felt the engine ticking underneath like a heartbeat.  
“See you on the flip side, baby,” he whispered. “And thanks for everything.”  
  
Blown out glass crunched under his feet. His finger hovered over the trigger of his pistol. He wouldn’t have this reunion stolen from him by a Croat. Not after all this time. He walked slowly, the darkened windows of abandoned buildings like a hundred pairs of empty eyes on him. Sam – no not Sam – could be lurking behind any one of them.  
The sun was setting as a figure came into view up ahead, orange fire beyond the smoke and ash which shrouded the city, burnishing the world. Fitting, thought Dean. He’d know that shape anywhere. Sammy. Sobs wracked his body and he had to stop to swipe the tears out of his eyes with the back of his hand. Sam was reduced to an outline, imposing and square-shouldered against the sky. He stood, waiting as Dean approached, slowing his pace like a condemned man walking the green mile. If only he was headed toward something as simple as death.  
“Hello, Dean.”  
Dean’s heart bottomed out at the sound of his brother’s voice after all this time. Dean would’ve known Sam wasn’t in control of his body, even if he hadn’t been dressed in a finely tailored, powder blue suit, just by the inflection of those two little words. But he was damned if the sound didn’t make his fingers twitch with longing to touch his brother all the same.  
“You get out of him, you son of a bitch.”  
The creature pulled Sam’s face into a grin.  
“Dean Winchester. How long’s it been? Five years?”  
“You know it has.”  
“So you do recognise me, then?”  
Dean looked down at the dusty ground and shook his head.  
“We beat you. We stopped you.”  
A nasty laugh bubbled out of Sam’s mouth.  
“You never were a particularly quick study, were you Dean? I tried to warn you. Whatever you do, whatever choices you make, whatever details you alter, we will always end up here. And here we are.”  
Lucifer plucked a single white rose from his lapel and stalked toward Dean. Dean thought about backing up, decided it was futile and stayed stock still as the devil tucked the flower into his buttonhole.  
“It’s so good to see you, brother. You could do with a shave, though. Would you like me to trim your hair?”  
“You’re not my brother.” Dean hoped Lucifer couldn’t see the way his hands were trembling.  
“But you are Sam’s, and he and I are one in the same now. We’re assimilated. He let me in. Well, he let Gadreel in, and we have you to thank for that, don’t we?”  
Dean’s shoulders slumped.  
“My beloved, loyal Gadreel. My herald. He would do anything for me, just as Sam would for you. That’s why we’re here, after all, isn’t it Dean. Because Sam could never refuse you. Even when his body was broken, his spirit jaded. Even when every cell in his body was failing and his mind was ready for merciful oblivion. You couldn’t let him go, could you, Dean?”  
Tears spilled freely down Dean’s face. Lucifer brought Sam’s hand up to cup the back of Dean’s neck. He leaned in so that their foreheads touched. Dean didn’t try to jerk away. He let the chilled pressure of Sam’s flesh send a shiver through him. He breathed in the scent of his brother’s hair. It still smelled of Sammy and of the air before rain.  
  
“He’s in here, you know, Dean. Sam. He’s fine. Wilful as ever, of course, but he’s coming around. You see, I just want him to be happy. I want him to reach his full potential. And he can’t be truly happy without you, Dean. You must know that. Even though you handed him to me on a plate.”  
  
Dean’s eyes snapped up to meet Lucifer’s. He saw his brother’s unusual irises, beautiful like fire opals, but hardened by an unearthly and cold light.  
  
“Don’t worry. He’s had time to think. He gets it. You see, you think you’ve been so clever, Dean. So secretive. Kept all your unnatural thoughts and desires locked away in your sinful heart through all these long years. But your brother is wily. He’s astute. He sees you.”  
  
Lucifer tilted his head, his face mere inches from Dean’s and let Sam’s lips brush Dean’s cheek as his whispered in his ear.  
  
“Wanna know what the real kicker is, Dean? The sting in this tale? He’s just as sick as you. That’s right. Poor lonely little Sam-I –Am. Never in one place long enough to make friends. Spying on his big brother under the bleachers with his hand up some slut’s skirt. Getting hard in his hand-me-down pants because he imagined you kissing those girls and leaking all over the fabric, right in the spot where his own flesh was swelling and twitching. The nights he prayed it was just a phase, but he never grew out of it. That’s why he ran. But you pulled him right back in, didn’t you Dean? Because you could never, ever let go.”  
Dean shuddered as Sam’s fingers slid up into his hair, the cool tips caressing his scalp.  
“He always half hoped one day he’d have the courage to make the first move so you could plead plausible deniability when he spread his legs for you. He knew you’d never forgive yourself otherwise. He thought maybe, if it happened, there would be no coming back from it, and you could both, finally, be free. He always imagined it would be as much fighting as fucking.”  
Dean’s pulse raced, his vision blurred by his tears, and he swallowed past the bile rising in his gullet.  
“But he thinks that would suit you just fine.”  
Dean opened for it when he felt the press of his brother’s lips. He offered up a silent of prayer of thanks that Sam’s tongue, when it slipped into Dean’s mouth, wasn’t forked. It was just as he always imagined it would be. Just a little colder.  
Lucifer pulled back and Dean let him tilt his chin up and examine his face.  
“That’s my good boy,” the devil purred, stroking Dean’s cheek with the back of his hand. “My consort. I’m sorry it took so long. I’m sorry that we had to do it the hard way, but you had to learn for yourself. You had to come willingly. If you love something, let it go, and for love it shall return. Honestly, I’d have been disappointed if you hadn’t fought. But this was always how it was going to end.”  
Dean sniffed, and looked over Lucifer’s shoulder. Everything was crumbling and burning, everything as far as he could see.  
“You have to let me see him. You have to let me speak with him, or we don’t have a deal. I’ll put a bullet in my brain right now, I swear.”  
Lucifer laughed then, a sound like breaking glass.  
“I’d just piece you straight back together, Dean, but I appreciate the sentiment. You have to understand, that Sam and I – we’re one entity. We cannot be fractured. Not anymore. I’ve absorbed everything of your brother’s – his memories, his strength. His love for you. But now, you are twain, you are cloven apart. Flesh of his flesh, but heart of my heart.”  
“Then pretend. Please.”  
The smirk died on Sam’s lips and he frowned. The strange light left his eyes.  
“Dean?” The voice was unmistakably Sam’s. “Dean! Where have you been? I thought I’d lost you!”  
His brother’s facsimile pulled him into a rib-bruising hug, and Dean closed his eyes and let his tears soak into Sam’s hair. It didn’t matter anymore. Dean didn’t have to hide. It was a relief to know this was the only choice left to him. That he’d never really had a choice at all. He felt almost euphoric. He held on and concentrated on the feel of those strong hands kneading his back, smoothing his hair. He heard his brother’s voice shushing him.  
“I’m here now. We’re together. Everything’s gonna be okay, Dean.”  
And it was close enough.

 

 

 


End file.
